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Talk:Paladins/@comment-5019117-20120510161450/@comment-1435793-20120510223141
What you are describing is classic material for the Strategy portion of an article. The description of the unit itself, on the other hand, cannot contain information that is not directly pertinent - otherwise you would have to note a ton of different other things. For example, Invulnerability is one of the best spells to cast on Paladins - I do that every time I get them if the spell is available, or Iron Skin if playing Nature. But this is not something that's integral to the unit - one player may decide to use these spells, while another doesn't. In the same vein, one player could build the Cathedral and Armorers' Guild well before reaching the Alchemists' Guild or even the Sages' Guild. Wizards with little emphasis on spellcasting can reach Paladins very early and get completely different benefits from that. The point is that there's no direct link between the Paladins and the Alchemists' Guild, and so should not be mentioned as part of the article. Again, as far as strategy goes, all bets are off. I'm hoping that every page will eventually have a separate strategy article ( i.e. .../Wiki/Paladins/Strategy ) where players can add whatever their preferences are - similar to Dan Simpson's FAQ, in Wiki form. There you could mention how useful the Alchemists' Guild is for this unit, and recommend advancing to it - if construction doesn't naturally go there already. So I do agree that the numbers should appear somewhere, but their place isn't in the article itself. However again, both articles for Magicians and Warlocks need those numbers due to the same exact logic: This is something that nearly every such unit (excluding Mercenaries) will have regardless of the player's choices, and so should be mentioned there. That's the same with units produced from the Fighters' Guild and Armorers' Guild (Paladins included) where I've taken care to mention that these units are almost always built with an extra Experience level - and I've added the bonuses from that extra level to the article wherever they apply. So yeah, at some point in the game almost every Spearman you produce will also get that extra level for the same reason - but that's up to the player. He/she can consult the average damage table to see how Spearmen improve if they gain experience (by any method), but I don't need to mention that while explaining how strong Spearmen are by default. I'm sorry for the long long post - I just want to get this concept through. My greatest fear is that articles will grow too long to be readable. Yes, they CAN potentially include vast amounts of data - about the interactions between every spell and every unit, every unit and every building, and so on - but you'd be giving up readability. Strong guidelines are necessary to prevent that. Anyhow, I hope I explained things in a suitable fashion - I'm not keen to argue too much about this. If the subject bothers you that much, your best course of action should be to figure out a way to display such information. In my opinion, a calculator that computes a unit's actual stats based on level, weaponry, and possibly even spell effects would be a good solution - but it's a lot of work. If you don't care to create one that's fine - I'll probably end up doing so myself at one point or another - but it's probably the best way to display the data you're talking about.